I am going to buy a flash drive today. I need some advice on what size to buy. I am using it mostly for picture storage. At the moment, I have around 600 pictures. I obviously want to be able to expand. Is there a # of pictures per GB calculation? Also any favorite manufacturers?

__________________
Miss Buddies crsides & fat tom

Flash drives can now store about 32gig for about $30. A one gig flash drive should be under $5 during a Christmas sale and may almost be a 'throw-in'. They are very handy for file transfers between computers or for 'pocket carry'. For backup or longer term storage, you might consider a portable hard drive. They are available from about 250gig to 1terrabite and cost from $50 to $100. They are Blackberry size and use the same USB port. Depending on the size of your pictures, a flash drive can fill up very quickly. My camera setting per picture is from 250K to 1 meg. At 1 meg per picture (high resolution) that would mean 1000 pictures on a 1 gig flash drive. You can always save the pictures at a lower resolution by using a photo editor in your computer. For snap shots 250K resolution is more than enough. So using non-fuzzy math, a 1terrabite portable hard drive could store about one million high resolution pictures. If you move into video, you will need lots of storage space. Both a portable hard drive and a flash drive suck power from your computer, so plugging in a laptop for mass file transfers, should be considered. Hope this helps a little. Good luck!

I carry a 32 gig flash drive and have a couple of 16 gig drives in my desk.

A 32 gig will hold more than you will ever want for storage. If you want to keep the photos, I would suggest writing a DVD.

A word of warning: Flash drives have a way of disappearing. I have lost several of them.

Walmart has SanDisk 4GB for $10. Buy one and fill it up before buying another. Don't put everything on one. Joe

__________________
Behavior Creates Destiny

Any electronic storage device can fail catastrophically without warning. Files you really want, need to be stored with copies on at least 2 separate media.

A buddy of mine is a beta tester for *******. He showed me a beta releaase of a 1+TB USB thumb drive a few months ago. Crash and burn, as he put it. Multiple Copies of whatever you want to keep, on a stable format, is the best way to go. USB thumb drives are stable up to, and including 32 GB.

Class III

I own a ScanDisk and cannot suggest someone buying them. They do not work in many of the photo machines found in places like CVS, Walgreens and others. If they are removed before going through a shut down process, the information put in can be corrupt. Mine will work on my home computer and laptop but it will not read on a computer at the local police department. I like the way they open and close but not the way they work.

Flash disk memory is a commodity, so buy the least expensive you can find. I like Newegg.com myself. Much less expensive, as a rule, than buying retail. Fast shipping and very reputable.

600 pictures is a small task unless they're huge files. I recently bought a 16G flash drive as a 2nd backup for my wife's pictures, some 12,000 of them. I keep them on an external hard drive, CD's and the flash drive. They're irreplaceable! The flash drive is with the CD's in the safe now, will go to the safe deposit box soon.

__________________
VIVERE MILITARE EST

All kinds on sale today at all the office supply chains.

__________________
Still Running Against the Wind

Always use the gun safe rule when buying media storage...

__________________
Thirty characters. Exactly...

JPEG files deteriorate a little bit each time you copy or open them. If your photos are really important to you, save them as a TIF or GIF file then backup on a portable hard drive. Flash drives can fail for many reasons - one of my dogs thought mine would be fun to play with and that was the end of that one. Flash drives were originally designed to transfer files easily from the office to the home system - not as long term storage or backup of important files. I can almost guaranty that if you store important files and photos on a flash, you will regret doing so. JMHO

Pete

__________________
Don't tread on me

The sad fact is there is no good long term digital storage medium. A hundred years from now we will still have photos from the Civil War, but most of the digital pictures we have now will be lost to oblivion.

Not sure about the rest here, but I do not think I will be worrying about my picture storage in 100 years.

Nor will any of my children or grandchildren.

That wasn't exactly my point, but how about 40 or 50 years from now? We have a lot of color photos my Dad took in the early 60's into the 70's that are about gone. The irony is that the older black and white photos look the same as ever, but the color negatives have faded badly. Unfortunately he bought a lot of offbrand films that were cheaper and they are not holding up. The Kodak stuff has fared a little better, but it is going too. Dad also jumped on the Polaroid bandwagon, and much of that is now extremely poor quality. I can't speak for your family, but it matters to us that the photos have deteriorated so badly. Too bad Dad didn't use Kodachrome.